After success on the Mac, Sparrow mail app lands on the iPhone

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Apple has, at times, taken a hard stance on companies that try to use its platform to compete with iOS’ core tools. We’ve seen that stance relent to some extent but today a big step was taken. Sparrow, an email client that has become rather popular on the Mac App Store, was made available for iOS. This makes Sparrow’s email client the first alternative to Apple’s Mail.app.

The app costs $2.99 and it’s available for download right now. Just like the Mac client is a slick, Twitter-like alternative to the boring mail apps that people used to use before webmail took over (and some people still use, I suppose), Sparrow livens up your inbox with more colors, better controls, avatars, and all sorts things that you’d expect from a premium app hellbent on bringing some UX help to your inbox.

Sparrow is in most ways a full-fledged email client with support for IMAP, integration with popular email services (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), a unified inbox for people that have multiple accounts, full swipe controls, support for message prioritization, integrated search, and so on. And some of what the app doesn’t have is on the way — the company has promised support for no-brainers like landscape mode and a built-in browser, as well as handy features like a send-and-archive button.

Before you get too excited and pull Mail.app from its coveted spot on the bottom bar of your iPhone, know this: the Sparrow app doesn’t yet support POP accounts or Push. Push support is key for heavy email users, who want to get an alert when their email lands, not when they stop what they are doing and open the app. In their iTunes listing Sparrow specifically noted that the app does not have support for POP or push “yet”, so they seem hopeful that this will be resolved one day.

Sparrow noted that the app doesn’t have push because that feature would require the the company to store user information on its servers. Apple doesn’t need to do with their app this because they impose limits on the background processing that third party apps can do, while letting their own apps, like Mail, operate unfettered. The Sparrow team had discovered a work around using the VoIP background API, but Apple noticed it and rejected the app. After push (based on the non-existent VoIP functionality) was removed the app was approved.

While interesting, this still doesn’t explain why Apple approved an alternative mail app in the first place. They’ve reject many apps that they have seen to be competing directly with built-in tools (browers and so forth) but perhaps they are softening their stance and opening iOS up a little? Of course, if you are cynical, you could say that Apple is happy to let you buy a handsome, incomplete app that will act as an alternative to theirs if you’d like. After all, as great Sparrow looks, it’s not a competitor to Mail.app without push. Or maybe Apple is just rewarding Sparrow for putting out a solid email client and adding value to another one of their platforms?